Cults, Religions and Ideologies Merely Unmask Human Nature

The image of ‘god/s’ in each religious belief systems is therefore really a projection of the deepest desires of those who profess faith in that particular system.

The next logical question then is- What does that say about those who do things because they are trying to be good members of their cult, religion or ideology? I hope you realize that there is no basic difference between a cult, religion and ideology. Doing something questionable for a group that professes belief in Xenu, Kolob, the ‘God’ in the Old Testament, the Son of God, Allah or Mother Earth are functionally equivalent and tell us more about the true nature of the human ‘mind’ rather than anything about those fictional entities. Similarly a person who does things because they believe in Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Feminism, Scientists, Experts or any other -ism is functionally identical to one who does it for a more traditional god.

So what do the more feverent followers of any religious ideology do when they are not trying to show each other that they are the ‘bestest’ followers of the one true word of ‘god’ from its ‘final’ prophet? Guess…

They are busy using their professed faith to lie, steal, abuse, torture and kill other people. Some people think that modern cults like Scientology are somehow more evil than traditional religions like Christianity and Islam. However even a cursory reading of history suggests otherwise. I would highly recommend you to read books that describe various versions of what the ‘faithful’ Catholic Spanish did to the ‘heathen’ indigenous people of the Caribbean, South and Central America. I am talking actual torture, executions, rape, slavery etc- not just all the diseases they brought with them to the Americas. Even the versions written by semi-sympathetic Spanish priests make the genocides carried out by third Reich look rather tame. Once they could find no more gold and silver, they simply enslaved whoever was still alive and have continued to exploit them. Even Stalin’s genocides ultimately made things a bit better than before (compare Russia in 1920 to Russia in 1950). The same cannot be said about the Portuguese-Spanish genocides in Mesoamerica where things never really got better until late in the 20th century.

Let us face it- the Portuguese and Spanish conquistadors were into stealing gold, killing others and raping women. They just justified their behavior through increasingly peculiar interpretation of religions- because even the biggest sociopath likes to believe that he or she is a ‘good’ person.

Then there is the whole issue about what actually drove the spread of Islam in the early middle ages. While modern apologists would like you to believe that they were trying to spread their version of the ‘good word’ the historical facts say otherwise. Every single expansion of Islam was driven by the need for more Gold, Slaves and Pussy. Accounts of events by Muslim scholar, kings and generals show they were obsessed with how much loot was collected, how many ‘unbelievers’ were killed and how many slaves and women were captured. Spreading their religion was really low on their list of priorities and was frequently an afterthought. Some might say that they were merely following the example of the founder of that religion- and I would agree.

It is obvious that Islam, like Catholicism, has functionally been largely a smokescreen for looting, killing and raping. I would go on to say that Protestantism was no better given the multitude of Catholic-Protestant Wars in the earlier part of the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Similarly the Roman and Greek religions were mostly about providing justification for looting, killing and raping. Even religions that did not explicitly command their followers to fight wars against unbelievers (Hinduism, Confucian Belief Systems) were built around abusing, looting and stealing from other people. Capitalism for all its pretense of enlightenment and rationality is functionally no different from any traditional religion that provides a smokescreen for the same- as is communism which delivers some version of hell while claiming to herald the dawn of utopia.

But what does that say about the people who profess beliefs in such ideologies? What does it say about the real nature of human beings?

You might have noticed that groups as unconnected as Romans in the 2nd century BC, Arabs in the 7th Century AD and Aztecs in the 14th century AD or Capitalists in our era keep acting the same way under different ideological guises. It is therefore likely that the repeated invention of organized religious-type ideology says something rather unpleasant about the human mind. Maybe it says something that most human beings would rather not think about, let alone publicly acknowledge.

Maybe the default mental settings for a majority of human beings are very different from what we want to believe. Maybe most human beings are NOT thoughtful and reasonable creatures with any hard-wired concepts of what we call ‘humanity’. Maybe most humans are more like poisonous and invasive weeds than sentient apes who might evolve into something “better”. Maybe most humans, especially the so-called ‘high IQ’ morons, are actually incapable of rational thinking given that they expend their “intellect” into creating newer scams to do steal, abuse and kill others rather than elevating their own capabilities. Need I remind you that civilization caused a significant reduction in quality of life until the last 70 years.

> because even the biggest sociopath likes to believe that he or she is a ‘good’ person <

Well that is not true: psychopaths and sociopaths have no need to believe that they are at bottom good people; any views they express are geared to manipulating other people.
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Actually, I disagree with that. The excessive narcissistic tendencies of sociopaths require constant external affirmation. Psychopathic criminals are somewhat different- but they rarely become leaders or manage to stay alive in such positions.

The people who need ideology to go over the line know there is a line and require justification and group symmetry, and no matter how appalling, have a different internal and social dynamic than psychopaths who are usually a little more straightforward and transparent about themselves and others.
"We need to kill them to save them" is in a class of its own. (Along with fighting for peace and prosperity through austerity).

Capitalism “is functionally identical to one who does it for a more traditional god”. I thought Capitalism was merely a freely contracting enterprise between individuals and companies – It’s how we get our good on the table. Any regulation or tilting of the market would starve half the population. However, I had not realized, according to you, it functioned as god-worship. I had thought it was a laissez faire attitude to the market and thus freedom upon humans. Maybe “freedom is a cult”. Or is that just a current meme?

Catholicism is to Protestantism as Communism is to Socialism: one is living a death-cult, the other is a well-meaning Useful Idiot.

Dude, capitalism evolved in tandem with state expansion and nationalism, both of which were instrumental to industrial development. Countless technologies currently used to benefit ordinary people were originally developed because the military of either the U.S. or one of the wealthier Northwestern European countries found it to give them advantage. Northwestern Europe was the first region in where the extended family was dissolved as a social model, in favor of deference to the state as the enforcer of rights and duties. Such allowed strangers to trust each other enough to cooperate in large-scale enterprises. While I think this ultimately led the west to developing a much higher material standard of living (in addition to a culture which gives the individual much more latitude to live according to their preferences than many other places), but you cannot decouple capitalism from the conditions that gave rise to it.

anon666

December 20, 2012 at 8:45 am

At any rate, the libertarian concept of the peaceful free market operating independently of the big bad state until it impinged itself upon said traders against their will is completely ahistorical. Capital and the state have always been business partners, not enemies.